As his tension subsided, strength left his body as well. Cayden lowered his head. That’s when he noticed the juice, snacks, and fruits still remaining as they were half an hour ago.
Back when he worked at the farm, Emma, who was often drafted to serve guests visiting the mansion, would sometimes curse the master’s guests. She would click her tongue at the wastefulness of the highborn, saying they didn’t know how precious food was. Cayden wasn’t sure why he suddenly recalled Emma’s angry face. He felt somewhat embarrassed.
Cayden picked up a glass containing a red beverage and brought it to his lips. The juice with its unfamiliar aroma and taste was as refreshing as the interior of the palace, which always maintained a cool temperature as if unaware of the heat outside. Just as the teacher who told him about the imperial palace had said, it seemed there really was a magician stationed in the kitchen.
After hesitating, Cayden placed the glass back without taking another sip. While the fresh fruity sweetness felt pleasant, he somehow felt a tightness in his chest. Perhaps it was because he was a rustic person who had never tasted such things before.
Cayden had obligatory daily meetings with his spouse, Crown Prince Assad Mekerius. Since the separate palace was divided into the east wing, which was the Crown Prince’s space, and the west wing, which was the Crown Prince Consort’s space, and neither was small, they wouldn’t easily run into each other unless they deliberately set up appointments like this. And Assad would absolutely never seek out Cayden on his own.
‘…He was angry today as well.’
Cayden recalled his first meeting with Assad.
A man more beautiful than all the pretty things he had seen in his life combined had been angry, speaking words Cayden couldn’t understand. It was the same during the wedding preparations and when they kissed at the temple. Though Assad quickly stopped speaking in an agitated voice. He didn’t make such a menacing face that would freeze one’s body either.
Yet, to Cayden’s eyes, Assad still seemed angry. It was as if he knew that spilled water couldn’t be gathered back, so he was trying hard to contain his anger.
When meeting Assad’s eyes as he looked at him, Cayden felt a chill in his heart. It was because he could feel with his whole body that he had earned the other’s hatred.
He didn’t feel resentment toward Assad. He had no intention of voicing complaints either. Cayden understood Assad, who wouldn’t accept him as his partner. That’s why he felt sorry for Assad instead of resentment.
He was an uneducated, ignorant person. But even so, he knew that his marriage to Assad was absurdly strange. Someone who had nothing, who was stupid, ugly, and unrefined, couldn’t become the partner of someone noble. Especially if that noble person was the Crown Prince of the empire.
“It’s strange that they’re leaving me alone…”
A short sentence in the kingdom’s language flowed from between Cayden’s lips.
Why had they brought him here in the first place? What in the world had the god said? Words that would be pointed at as blasphemous if Helio people heard them naturally flowed out.
Cayden lifted his head and looked outside. The harsh sunlight was poking at the side of his face, which had made him reflexively turn his gaze.
Slowly, Cayden took in the unfamiliar foreign landscape: the round dome spires glittering with the afternoon heat above, the white marble columns lined up and the long shadows following behind them, the entrance to the garden where flowers of brilliant colors he couldn’t name were in full bloom.
Although not much time had passed since the wedding… it had already been more than a fortnight since he had come to Helio, following the ambassadors and priests dispatched from the kingdom.
Stroking the anxiety that threatened to burst out on its own, Cayden thought of the priest he had met in the kingdom and the king.
“For the past 200 years, we have designated partners for the Crown Prince and Crown Princess, who would become the future sun, in place of the silent god. The current Crown Prince also had a predetermined partner. But the god, breaking a very long silence, spoke again. He bestowed a companion oracle upon His Highness. The true moon of the desert in that oracle… is you.”
The young priest who had met with Cayden alone had spoken in a gentle and respectful tone.
But he couldn’t hide the doubt in his eyes. Faced with the doubt that a believer harbored toward his god, Cayden had to shrink like a criminal.
The king, whom Cayden met just before leaving Elba, had also spoken to him in a tone no less gentle than the priest’s.
“So you, in the end, have obtained the Crown Prince who was promised in marriage to the most beautiful man in the desert. You, who are nothing, have beaten the flower of the desert. It’s an interesting thing.”
He had said this while informing Cayden that the Crown Prince had had a fiancé.
“You will live the rest of your life without wanting to. That is, if you can endure the time given to you.”
“…”
“This is a deal with your life at stake, but it’s also a deal between this kingdom and the empire. Keep that fact deeply engraved in your heart. You must never forget it.”
Cayden couldn’t understand what the king’s words meant. He could only assume that there must be some benefit to be gained by handing him over to the empire.
The mention of “time given” was equally incomprehensible. He could only guess that perhaps it meant if the Crown Prince developed some human affection for him during that time, he might not immediately cast him out. But looking at Assad’s angry face… it seemed difficult to even last a year here.
Assad, who disliked him, appeared to be someone who would forge his own destiny. He also seemed to have so much energy that he might tear apart even the fate set by the god of this place as if it were nothing. Perhaps he just couldn’t go against his parents’ wishes yet.
Recalling Assad’s disgruntled face, Cayden continued his meaningless thoughts.
The priest of Helio had smiled kindly at Cayden, calling him the bride who would receive the love of the sun. Nowhere on the face of the gentle middle-aged woman, as mild as spring, could Cayden find the doubt he had encountered in the kingdom.
But…
“Cayden. Love is something that happens between people. But you’re not a person, you’re a worm.”
“Who would like someone as ugly as you?”
Cayden ruminated on the voices that had followed him all the way from the cold north to this hot desert country. He swallowed the mockery that struck his heart and fled.
The bride who would receive the love of the sun is not me.
Cayden held no expectations for the new journey that had begun in Helio.
Cayden was a person who didn’t dream of the future. The day he was promised adoption by a kind baroness, he acquired scars on his face and body from a fire accident. The promise became nothing.
When he grew a bit older and was sold to a count’s family, he encountered the greatest misfortune of his life. By the time he had become numb to that misfortune, he was suddenly expelled and left on the streets. He was barely able to find a job with the help of an old friend he met by chance… but then he was pushed like this again into a strange world.
Cayden knew that this suddenly started journey would also end very abruptly in a truly bad way, as if to mock this luxurious life.
‘Even if I’m going to be kicked out, for now… I should at least be able to understand the language.’
He wanted to lessen the anger in Assad’s golden eyes. If he could properly understand what was being said and not show the behaviors that Assad disliked, wouldn’t his anger subside at least a little? Cayden harbored such a hopeful thought.
But learning a language wasn’t an easy task. Even in Elba, he had barely learned to read after turning twenty. If he hadn’t been forced to learn because of the young master’s pressure, he would have lived his entire life without knowing even that much.
Moreover, being naturally stupid, learning the desert language, which wasn’t very different from the kingdom’s language but was more complex, was inevitably slow.
The teacher teaching him the imperial language was also scary. Every time he sighed, Cayden’s mind went blank. Whether the contempt the teacher displayed toward him was real or just his delusion, he couldn’t tell. But his fear of the teacher was entirely his own fault. He kept watching the teacher’s reactions, thinking that he was teaching him reluctantly.
Cayden feared people with anger in their eyes more than those holding knives. And he thought that was quite pathetic.
Hurururu. Hurururu.
Startled by the sound of birds, Cayden turned his gaze outside again. The strange cries of birds said to live only in the desert still hadn’t become familiar, causing him to react sensitively.
After being quiet all this while. Perhaps they had returned to their original places, realizing that the presence that might disturb the master of the separate palace was alone again.
Come to think of it, it wasn’t just the birds. The world seemed to start moving busily, as if trying to release all the sounds it had been holding back at once.
Rising from his seat, Cayden moved with slow steps to stand in front of the arch leading to the garden. The sound of water flowing through the waterway and the sound of the large fountain hidden in the garden of light spitting water tickled his ears.
Really, had everything in this separate palace been keeping quiet for Assad? No, perhaps it was just that he had been too tense to hear anything.
Sounds erupted ceaselessly from all directions. Even the voices of children, whose whereabouts were unknown, began to be heard faintly. He thought they might be the voices of the children who, he was told, were Assad’s relatives, whom he had seen just once.
They were singing. Even though it was a song sung in the imperial language, the lyrics were simple enough to stick in his ear somewhat.
“The prince is everywhere. The friend beside you might be the prince. The princess is everywhere. The friend in front of you might be the princess. So be careful with your words.”
Prince and princess. It seemed to be an old song that had been sung since the kingdom era, before Helio unified the western continent.
‘His Highness the Crown Prince… looks like a noble person to anyone. How could one fail to recognize him when he’s right beside them?’
Leaning his shoulder against the arch column, Cayden pondered the lyrics. Assad’s beautiful face floated around in his mind for a while.
* * *
A few days later, an unexpected visitor came to Cayden. It was past noon.
Cayden, who had been sitting with his back against a cushion placed in a corner of the balcony, vacantly staring at the sky, had to start in surprise at the unfamiliar person who suddenly appeared before him without any warning.
The visitor, blocking the clear sky, looked down at the startled Cayden.
“I am Amun, who has come by the Crown Prince’s order to be Cayden’s conversational partner.”
